What trick of the strengthening
light, what angle of the tilting world
to the sun, what is the alarm
that sets the trees to work?
Solitary in grazed meadows
or grouped in copse and hanger, trees
ripen their plump buds
at some green signal
of returning spring.---Leslie Norris(from Stones Trees Water)
This is the time of year when I first begin to believe that the winter is actually going to end. I know there will be more snow, probably, and many more cold days, but it won't be the kind of snow that languishes for weeks in gritty piles on the sides of the road, unmelted by the weak, pale sunlight.
And there will be warm days in between the cold ones. And the 8-o'clock patch of sunlight has reappeared in my bedroom. And we have daffodil and crocus shoots peeking through the dirt. And the boys can ride their bikes outside.
We're going to make it.
Leslie Norris is one of my favorite poets! What a quirky man in real life! I wish I had, like you, been able to study him in person!
ReplyDeleteThis will be one of those winters for me that getting through will make me feel successful. I'm so glad to see spring around the corner--even if it's a long ways off still. (which it is here, considering we just got a foot of snow dumped on us last night, ahh!)
ReplyDeleteThank heavens I took that class from LN.
ReplyDeleteI feel this same way, Marilyn.
Here are a couple of things:
ReplyDelete1) you have said exactly what I have felt about this time of year since junior high. I remember sitting in a school bus, looking out at the March snow and thinking that exact thing for the first time.
2) You are about to lose your patch of morning sun, because daylight savings starts on the 8th or 9th - can't remember which, this month. Who decided that? Who decides anything these days?
But spring must be soon. Can it make all of this poll of politics and rampant stupidity and danger away too?
I heart spring! I've been in the best mood lately because of it.
ReplyDeleteI don't mean to brag, but it's been spring here for at least a month. My peach trees are blossoming, we just tilled our garden so we can plant . . . So when are you going to move down?
ReplyDelete